Blantyre

Scottish missionary, explorer and anti-slavery campaigner David Livingstone was born on 19 March 1813 in Blantyre, Lanarkshire. Livingstone came from a humble background and was dedicated to studying from an early age. It was through his education, in fact, that he was able to bring together his interest in medicine and theology with his Christian faith. After studying medicine at Anderson’s College in Glasgow in the mid- to late 1830s, Livingstone applied to train as a missionary with the London Missionary Society (LMS), with a view to becoming a medical missionary abroad. Prior to the Disruption of the Church of Scotland the LMS was a common route for Scots to take who were interested in missionary work as the Church of Scotland did not yet send particularly many missionaries on …